Seven Steps for SharePoint Success

Driving adoption and change management can be the most challenging component of a SharePoint project because SharePoint requires the organization’s business users to change existing behaviors and processes. However, adoption can also be the most critical factor to the success or failure of your SharePoint implementation. To encourage adoption, organizations should intentionally create conditions so resources can see the greater benefit of working in new ways, and give them the capability to do so. Driving adoption and organizational change involves concise communication of the organization’s objectives and offerings, implementation of the training strategy and supporting materials, establishment of mechanisms to measure and report on results, and the provision of a mechanism to gather feedback and determine future enhancements. This step is an overarching requirement that should take place from the very beginning of the project planning effort and continue through its lifecycle.

Since the release of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint has become an indispensable corporate collaboration tool for users around the globe, deployed by millions of enterprises worldwide. However, its popularity with corporate users looking for an easy and intuitive way to collaborate and grow their businesses also presents management and governance challenges.

SharePoint Deployment Spectrum

SharePoint is often deployed one of two ways, according to Joe Hartsel, business strategy manager for SharePoint Services at ICC. At one end of the spectrum, SharePoint is implemented as a tightly controlled technology project run by IT without the input of the key stakeholders who will be expected to use the platform. This can lead to a locked-down solution that provides little benefit to the organization.

At the other end of the spectrum, SharePoint is rolled out as a wide-open platform with little governance and few policies in place to control how it is deployed and used, leading to SharePoint “sprawl” with documents, websites and wikis created on the fly. This can make the solution just one more data store for IT to manage and the CFO to audit, not to mention another weak point for security.

“We often see SharePoint deployed in these two extremes,” says Hartsel. “One is left so open that it becomes the Wild West. The other is locked down so tight that users can’t really do much of anything to make them more productive or effective so they just don’t use it. Neither is an optimum case.”

To solve these issues, ICC, a nationally recognized enterprise technology leader that provides business-critical application development, digital and Big Data analytic solutions, has developed Seven Steps for SharePoint Success to help organizations obtain the most from their SharePoint deployments and upgrades quickly, hitting as few potholes along the way as possible.

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